


Even In My Dreams

by lostnoise



Category: The Verge Series - A.C. Thomas
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Animal Instincts, Anthropomorphic, Canon Compliant, Catboys & Catgirls, Come Eating, Compatibility, Hand & Finger Kink, Knotting, M/M, Mates, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Orinstotle, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:13:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27725975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostnoise/pseuds/lostnoise
Summary: A different take on the aftermath of the interrogation by the Enforcers, set in a slightly different universe (with... Catboys, and ABO dynamics), but always with the same outcome between Orin and Ari.
Relationships: Aristotle Campbell/Orin Stone
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Even In My Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeckinaHandbasket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeckinaHandbasket/gifts).



> This was born from a discussion of catboys because Ari and Theo are perfect little catboys. This whole story grew from a few tiny ideas and a reworking of ABO dynamics.
> 
> Some things of note: Alphas have retractable fangs and claws, and they knot; betas are like normal humans; and omegas are catboys and catgirls, with ears and tails and they experience heats when they meet compatible alphas that make them feel safe.
> 
> The title comes from a quote by Prince Albert: “Even in my dreams, I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth.”
> 
> This whole fic is entirely self indulgent. Enjoy.

Ari never had much luck with finding an alpha in the past.

It was just… never a priority for Dr. Theophrastus Campbell, Ari’s brother, who needed nothing but his own confidence and ambition. And it had especially not been a priority for Dr. Aristotle Campbell, who followed the rules to the letter and had his nose to the dirt more often than not.

Prim, proper Ari with his lace-lined collars and shorthair fur, neat ears and slender tail, he presented a look that was buttoned up, slicked back, with naught a single hair out of place. On his search for his brother, however, he’d been pushed right out of his comfort zone.

Now, though, half a galaxy away from Britannia and captured by Enforcers, Ari was confronted with the inescapable knowledge that his pilot, Orin, the alpha with whom Ari had been getting… biblically acquainted with, had been married to a beta woman before. The omega felt his tail and whiskers twitch unhappily. With the knowledge that, technically, Ari was legally independent - emancipated when he and Theo were seeking teaching positions at the university - he couldn’t help but smile as he showed his hand. When the Enforcers question his ownership and the proper ownership of the ship, he simply pointed out his legal status.

_Independent._

Enforcer Azu seemed particularly upset by Ari’s save of his ownership, the man huffing and leaving the room.

But when they finally got back to the ship, Ari felt too hot under his cravat and collar. He blamed the stress of the situation right up until he cupped Orin’s face as they spoke, Ari reassuring Orin of his intelligence.

But heat flooded his entire body as he whispered, “Brilliant.”

Orin caught his wrist, turning his face into it to brush his lips over the inside of his wrist. “You… you smell good.” Orin let his tongue lick along the soft blue lines of Ari’s veins visible through his pale skin. “You _taste_ good, honey.”

That was when things clicked into place.

He was going into heat, triggered by a compatible alpha — something probably brought on by Orin’s prowess in calculations, his insistence that though he couldn’t read the formal scripts used so frequently in the Core colonies, seeing Orin’s vulnerability and wanting… just simply _wanting_. He wanted Orin. He knew their time was limited but it didn’t keep him from wanting, for perhaps the first time in his life, someone to be his alpha.

“I’m- this is horribly unexpected,” Ari blustered, stuttering and quickly going red all over. _So embarrassing, always so embarrassing,_ he thought to himself as he tried to think of a way to explain himself. “It’s just that… being an omega. And with you, being an alpha-”

“Oh?” Orin purred, fingers tightening around Ari’s wrist just the slightest as he dragged his nose up to Ari’s inner elbow, and his fangs must have dropped slightly as tiny pinpricks, nothing painful, scrapes oh so gently over his skin. “It’s like _that_ , is it, darlin’?” He looks up at Ari, eyes hooded and pupils blown as he presses a barely-there tease of a kiss to the soft skin of Ari’s arm. “You need an alpha to help you?”

“I need _you_ to help me,” Ari grumbled, only to let out a shriek of surprise when Orin slung him over his shoulder. He turned his head slightly, scenting the air, and Ari was sure his blush only grew darker when Orin took a deep breath through his mouth.

It didn’t take Orin long to dump Ari into his bed. 

“Off. Everything off.”

Ari struggled to comply, fingers shaking as he untied his cravat and then pressed along the soft, supple strip of leather wrapped around his neck.

“Orin?” He choked out, pupils blown wide when the alpha looked at him sans shirt, bracers hung down around his hips. “Alpha, please.”

Those eyes Ari tells himself he doesn’t dream about flick down to his neck and then back up to narrow in on Ari’s face. The alpha stalks forward, reaching out with one hand to cup Ari’s chin while the other slid down to cover the buckle at the base of his throat.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Orin reminded him as his thumb slipped the strip of leather from the metal buckle and loosened it just enough for his fingers to be the only thing holding it together. He squeezed Ari’s chin to gain his attention. “You got that, honey?”

“I want everything,” Ari whispered, turning his head to press soft kisses to Orin’s hand. “I want _everything_.”

Orin set about helping Ari undress before they were standing there, naked, and Ari felt so safe when Orin curled his big arms around Ari’s smaller body, when Orin pulled him close.

“I want to be even closer than this,” Ari whimpered, rubbing his skin against every bit of Orin’s he could manage.

“Do you know what you’re asking for, honey?” Orin whispered back, hands moving down to cup Ari’s ass and pull a loud moan from his mouth. Orin let his middle finger drag down the length of Ari’s back before he curled his fingers carefully around the base of Ari’s tail and rubbed there gently.

Ari mewled, tiny omega claws popping out and pressing into Orin’s tan skin.

“I could be all the way inside you, right here,” Orin whispered, finger swirling through the slick beading at the entrance of Ari’s hole. “Tell me, darlin’. Do you want that?”

“Alpha, please.” Ari curled his arms around Orin’s body and he rubbed against him, his small omega cock leaking over Orin’s belly. “I want it. I told you, I want everything. Everything you can give me.”

Orin tossed him back onto the bed and quickly flipped him onto his hands and knees.

Ari gasped, thighs spreading wide and ass arching up, his tail curving over his hip to expose himself in a move that was all omega instinct.

Proper presenting for his alpha.

Orin had to close his eyes and take a deep, shaky breath, clouded with omega pheromones, to get control of himself. His fangs were already descending, wanting nothing more than to bite and claim the beautiful, soft, unmarked flesh of the body beneath him. It took counting backwards from ten and imagining the grime of the Mining Pits of the Verge colonies to keep himself from losing it.

Ari, growing more and more lost to his heat, writhed below him, chest to the comforter, and his tail curled further as if to show off his hole even more. As if Orin could resist pressing his first finger in, both of them breathless at the tight, hot, wet heat and the blunt stretch of Orin’s thick digit.

Ari’s back arched sharper, head tilted back and ass as far up as he could manage, and he moaned loudly when Orin’s finger slid in all the way to the base. It crooked down as if searching for something; Ari fought back the urge to squirm until Orin brushed over something that had pleasure zipping up his spine like lightning.

“Alpha!” Ari cried out, looking over his shoulder at the bigger man.

“You like that, omega?” Orin asked him, licking at his fangs as his finger pistoned slowly in and out of Ari’s body, the boy leaking slick all around him. “Fuck, you’re so _wet_. Feels so good. Is this all for me?”

Ari let out a high pitched whine, thighs spreading impossibly wider. He flexed his fingers as he clutched the sheets, claws popping out and slicing tiny holes into the fabric. “Yes, it’s yours, all yours, alpha.”

Orin growled softly at the response. “That’s good, sugar. So good for me. Open up so sweetly, don’t you?”

Shivering at the praise spilling from Orin’s lips, Ari pushed his hips back against Orin’s finger needily. 

“Never… never before in my life-” Ari choked, ears going flat in embarrassment. He forced himself to continue. “-Have I experienced a heat. I’ve never- not for an alpha, it’s not- Orin, I-”

“Shhh, shh, baby,” Orin soothed. His free hand moved from Ari’s hip to pet at the small of his back, to rub at the base of his tail. Ari let out yet another mewl that had Orin struggling with his already paper-thin control. He couldn’t help but push a second finger in alongside the first, stretching Ari to fullness on just the width of his two fingers. “Your alpha’s got you.”

Ari preened at the way Orin referred to himself as Ari’s alpha, as if this was more than just a mere matter of biology. As if Orin wanted to keep Ari. He’d be the first and probably the last on a list of people who would want to have Ari around full time. But those thoughts weren’t given time enough to take root and bring him out of the overwhelming need for pleasure. 

As Orin worked his fingers into Ari, the redhead started rocking back minutely into the touch. It felt so good, but it wasn’t enough. As Orin pressed a third inside, Ari whimpered again like he’d been hurt, so Orin stopped for a moment and ran a hand down Ari’s spine. “You okay, kitten?”

“Yes, it’s only that I need you so very badly, alpha,” Ari managed to get out between pants and tiny moans. Orin slowly started to curl his fingers down into Ari’s spot and the omega let out a higher pitched whine, just on the verge of the an omega whine, but still the kind that had Orin’s cock going from mostly there to ready to explode. “Please. Please, need you…”

Orin dragged his fingers away, mouth open and breathing in greedy mouthfuls of oxygen and Ari’s sweet omega scent, like salted caramel that would melt right on your tongue. He raised his fingers to his mouth curiously and licked Ari’s slick from them only to groan at the addictive taste. Tasted just like he smelled.

With sweetness still on his tongue, Orin pulls his fingers away, careful of his fangs, and spit down onto Ari’s slick hole.

“Never seen an omega get so wet for me before,” Orin told him, passing his fingers under and around Ari’s entrance to gather his slick and slide it over and along his length before he shifted his hips to line up to Ari’s hole. “Tell me you want this, sweetheart. Tell me you want me.”

He was giving Ari one last out. One last chance to stop things before they went too far, farther than they could take back.

“I want this, and I want you,” Ari told him honestly, eyes catching in the low light of the room.

Orin held his breath while pushing forward, sinking into the tight, wet heat. Fucking transcendental. Orin had slept with plenty of people, mostly betas and omegas, and none of them had ever felt as good nor smelled as sweet as Ari did. None of them looked as good as Ari did, either, with his mouth dropped open on a high pitched whine.

He paused, rubbing Ari’s flank. “You okay there, sugar?”

“Yes,” Ari hissed, tail curling around Orin’s body.

“It’s not too much?”

“It’s perfect,” Ari whimpered. He was trembling as Orin slid deeper, filling every crevice he didn’t know was there. Like Orin was made to fill him up. Ari bit into his lower lip to keep his mouth from running away from him; he couldn’t very well admit something like that aloud, where Orin could hear those silly thoughts.

What he could do, however, was sigh and relax a little into it, the heat that blurred his thoughts subsiding as he was slowly filled to the brim. The sheets below him were in pieces once Orin was all the way inside of him. Ari had never thought that something like this could even be possible. He’d never imagined- but then, Orin showed him, didn’t he? This brilliant, soft man who would help anyone in need… Orin was enough to make him go utterly insane.

And Ari had never wanted anyone more.

“Shit, baby, if you could see yourself,” Orin whispered, mostly to himself, but Ari heard it and blushed bright in his cheeks and down his chest, which was nestled into the ruined sheets, half-shredded by Ari’s tiny claws. “You look perfect for me.”

Ari clenched down tightly around Orin, making the alpha hiss with pleasure. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Orin, mounted behind him, an imposing figure to anyone else but not to Ari. To Ari, Orin meant safety. Orin meant protection. Pleasure and patience. Orin meant _alpha._

Hands gripped his hips tightly, Ari unable to do more than wriggle in the alpha’s hold, as Orin pulled his hips back. Ari thought he meant to withdraw entirely and he clenched even tighter, tears forming in his eyes and a whimper on the edge of tumbling from his lips when Orin’s hips snapped forward and buried himself back inside.

The whimper tumbled out of his mouth and turned into an omega whine, the high-pitched, needy whines of satisfied omegas. He’d heard his fair share of whines, fake and real alike, but Ari’s hit him deep in his gut and made him pump his hips again. Knocked the breath out of both of them as he struck up a careful, deep rhythm. On every thrust in, Ari gasped as Orin’s cock hit that spot inside him that had him quaking.

“Alpha, alpha,” Ari panted, finally reaching back with one hand to grab Orin’s hand on his hip. “Need you, I… I need your knot.”

Orin let out a pleased growl at hearing Ari admit such a thing. He let go of Ari’s hips and loomed over him, his chest coming to press up against Ari’s back and his arms curling around Ari’s chest. The skin to skin contact was absolutely divine, and Ari couldn’t help how he started purring the very moment Orin held him close and sank seemingly deeper into him. He tilted his head to the side to expose the pale length of the back of his neck to Orin’s gaze, his own green eyes flicking up to Orin out of the very corners of his eyes.

Orin mouthed at the scent gland Ari had exposed. Whether Ari did so knowingly or unknowingly, Orin was affected by the flare of Ari’s scent, sweet and a little salty and warm. He wanted to bury himself in it forever.

Already, he could feel himself nearing the edge and he slid a hand down Ari’s body to wrap his thick fingers around Ari’s cock.

“Alpha, please knot me,” Ari sobbed, leaking slick all down his thighs and around Orin’s dick.

Everything was so slick and tight and smelled so strongly of Ari’s heat that Orin couldn’t guy do much more than follow the command. His hips snap forward as his knot pops inside and flares out to lock in the cum pumping out of his dick. Orin is snarling above him, but Ari lays there like there’s no other place he’d rather be, and he cums all over Orin’s fingers as he feels Orin’s teeth grazing so gently over the back of his neck. 

Orin turned them on their sides, careful of how Ari’s slender tail draped over his wrist and curled around his body. Snuffling up to Ari’s ear, Orin nibbled on the very tip of it, ginger fur in his teeth be damned. The slightest graze of his fang over the join of Ari’s ear to his head had the omega clenching and moaning around him to wring another orgasm out of them both.

When Ari’s wave subsided and he was clearer headed than he’d been all day, he groaned and slumped back against Orin’s chest.

“You good, darlin’?” Orin murmured, pressing a soft kiss right between Ari’s ears.

Ari just purred again, nestling back into Orin’s body and reaching for Orin’s hands to put back on his body. Orin laughed and held his soiled hand away.

“Baby, you don’t want this all over you,” Orin teased.

Huffing, the redhead brought the offending hand up to his mouth and licked a line straight up through the mess, suckling on each of Orin’s fingers while tiny moans snuck past his lips. He licked up and down Orin’s palm, sucked his cum from each digit, even started nibbling at the little at the slight hint of claw. When he looked over his shoulder at Orin, Ari had to fight a smug grin from spreading over his mouth because Orin’s eyes were flashing alpha gold and Ari could see his fangs dropping again.

“How ‘bout now?” Ari asked, voice gruff, when he let Orin’s fingers slip away from his mouth. His tail flicked teasingly through the air.

Orin didn’t reply verbally, but he did press that newly cleaned hand to the base of Ari’s neck. Just held him there, his other arm around Ari’s waist.

“When this is all over,” Orin murmured into his ear. “After you’ve found your brother, darlin’, I want you to be mine.”

“Yours?” Ari could barely squeak out the word above a whisper. The idea of belonging to Orin had heat thrumming under his skin already. He shivered.

“Mine,” Orin affirmed, and smiles against Ari’s head when the omega whimpered happily. “Mine to hold and mine to keep. My omega.”

Ari gasped loudly and then slapped his hand over his mouth. By the time they found Theo, Ari was sure that Orin would reconsider his position. No one had ever wanted to be Ari’s alpha before… and it’s not like someone as perfect an alpha as Orin would want to take that forever vacant role.

But the thought of it… even just the very thought of having Orin as his alpha was enough for Ari to let out a happy omega trill. He was a little embarrassed by it, but Orin just grinned and pulled Ari closer. Nuzzled Ari’s temple and kissed his cheek softly.

“You’re adorable, sugar,” came Orin’s deep voice from behind him. “Rest now. We’ve got another couple of days of this before we can jump the Verge.”

“You’ll take care of me?” Ari whispered, fingers curling around Orin’s wrists where his arms were still wrapped around Ari. It was like he didn’t want to take the chance that Orin could possibly pull away and leave him by himself. That would be the worst thing that could happen to Ari right now.

But Orin nodded where he dropped his face into Ari’s neck, snuffling and scenting with an eager interest.

“I’ll take care of you for as long as you’ll let me,” Orin promised. He kissed the patch at the back of Ari’s neck right over his scent gland, right where an alpha would bite their mating mark into his skin. Ari shivered again.

He hadn’t the heart to tell Orin that he’d just saddled himself with the prim and proper omega for life, with a vow like that.

 _Perhaps later,_ his mind offered hazily as his eyes slowly blinked shut. _Sleep now, think later._

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Anna for writing the beautiful story of Restricted and introducing these lovely characters in the first place.
> 
> Again... so self indulgent. I’m sorry if you didn’t enjoy it, but if you did, please let me know!


End file.
